Righteous Demon

Brothers and sisters: What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:35, 37-39)

How about demons and the Devil – the Evil One?   They are not mentioned in that list unless we count the fallen angels.   I prefer to treat them separately.   Can the Devil separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus meaning can the Devil stop us from loving God?  In very important ways, yes.

Father Andrew Greeley helps us understand.  I refer to his classic 1976 work “The Devil, You Say: Man and His Personal Devil and Angels.”  Greeley wrote: “Why can’t we say, ‘I’m not sure’ or ‘I don’t know?’ The Demon of Righteousness stops our tongues ands blocks our minds from admitting ignorance or unformed opinion, and in this he does us the most harm.  In fact he can claim credit for much of the suffering that human beings have inflicted on other human beings for the last couple of thousand years. 

The Righteous Demon’s strategy is simplicity itself.  He persuades us that we are right.  That rightness is not just your every-day garden variety rightness, he assures us that we are really right, unassailably right, self-evidently right, transcendentally right.  We are so right that our rightness unites us with the basic cosmic forces, whether they be moral or religious or political.  There is not the slightest possibility of doubt that we are right, and the evidence of that rightness is so overwhelming that those who do not see it are either extraordinarily stupid or in complete and total bad faith.  

Our enemies, therefore, are infidels; they are not mistaken, ignorant, misguided, or misled.  They are wrong.  Deliberately, self-consciously, maliciously, culpably wrong – so wrong they deserve to be punished for their wrongness.  They are indeed so wrong that, if they do not retract their wrongness, they may deserve extermination.

It is much to be feared that this particular demon is a Judeo-Christian demon…”

Father Greeley’s book and insights should be a must read especially in the context of today’s divided nation with its scapegoats and hatemongers.  So many of us are possessed by the Righteous Demon who separates us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.  And, that’s a fact.  I pause here to wrestle with this demon.

Deacon David Pierce